Poll Violence Grows

A spate of riots and kidnapping marks the end of peaceful protest in New Caledonia.

CAMPAIGNING for local elections in New Caledonia scheduled for April 24 began in a bad climate in February, when a “commando group” of 100 FLNKS activists attacked gendarmes with stones and cudgels in the northeast coast township of Poindimie. e ebruary '22 incident in which 15 gendarmes were injured and 10 taken hosage by Kanaks protesting the alienation of traditional tribal property for a hospital, also saw four military vehicles and two civ! ian cars flrebombed by members of icti tribe. Night-long talks between mil- Hants and officials saw the hostages released; the Kanaks involved escaped into surrounding bush but over the next few days 11 were captured The Poindimie “incident” reached flashpoint after months of futile discussion between administration and mumcipality officers who intended to build a regional hospital on the site as one of a number ofurban development projects and Tieti clans, who claimed the land as their own. Clan members occupied the land for three months, with the support of the FLNKS, and as a symbol of its commitment FLNKS officials decided to hold the organisation’s annual Congress in Poindimie over the weekend of February 19 and 20.

On the day before the Congress was to begin, however, gendarmes expelled the “squatters”, forcing the FLNKS to relocate its meetings on land owned by the neighbouring Tibarama tribe. Reports from Noumea say the gendarmes were taken by surprise by the “commando” group, apparently organised by the FLNKS’s radical left-wing Partie de Lib-

eralion Kanak (Palika), and that the at tack though criticised by the FLNKS leadership reflects the separatists’ new strategy of “muscular mobilisation” ex pounded by party president Jean-Marie Tjibaou after the Tibarama Congress, Pro-independence Kanaks and Euro peans have chosen, said Tjibaou, to re pudiate the statutes devised by French Minister for Overseas Territories Bernard Pons through a process of “active boycot t]ng”, “But the FLNKS is determined to negotiate a real self-determination Act leading to independence,” Mr Tjibaou cautioned .. .. , T u he P o^ can " not be excluded as New Caledonia moves closer to this month’s elections, timed to comc ! de w 1 ltl ? the metr opohtan French presidential elections, The anti-independence movement was Quick to respond to the Poindimie inci dents this February: Rapprochement pout a dans la Republique (RPCR) President Jacques Lafleur called, unsur pn singly, for the immediate dissolution of FLNKS because of its “terrorist” methods and branded its members

subversives .

New Caledonian issues look set to be come major stakes in the pre-election period. If the FLNKS fails in its strategy, French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac will claim its ineffectiveness as proof of the correctness of his policies ... and as a much-needed boost to his own presiden tial ambitions. But if trouble does strike, as seems increasingly likely, current Pres idem Francois Mitterrand will find it hard to resist exploiting the situation. □